“The Lord knoweth them that are His!” He knows us with profound love! God sanctified us, now we must choose to sanctify ourselves in His love.
We can’t be who God has made us unless we will our hearts to love Him. This is how we begin to penetrate who we really are. In Christ Jesus, we are a new supernatural identity. As we begin to understand how glorious and complete we have been created in Christ Jesus, only as we cultivate height and depth, the width and the power of God’s marvelous grace, are we able to taste the glory of our Spiritual reality and what is yet beyond prepared for us.
Our journey does not begin in heaven. It started as a babe created new in Jesus our Lord. It has already begun. We are now in the presence of His glory, now while still crawling or perhaps walking in shoe leather. He dwells within us, literally! This is our reality even in our spiritual apathy.
Sanctification, as used in the scriptures, speaks to the glory and riches belonging to us in heaven because we have been set apart by God but it also speaks of the power we are to exercise here and now because we are children of The Almighty Father. Our resurrection power is spiritual. It is Jesus continuing His work on earth but in us, using our shoes for walking. What a glory is ours and we have no clue!
Sanctification is about enabling us to do what God has already done. It speaks to our heavenly resources being applied in our flesh and our life by us tasking His work.
Sanctification is a cloudy issue if we merely believe it. The passion of grasping it and making it our personal possession is too often missing. Accepting it in our mind while understanding it with our reason is not adequate. Well, actually it is adequate for getting there, just be prepared to enter heaven as a spiritual pauper!
Sanctification has to do with putting on the “new man,” that is, putting on those robes of righteousness given to us in Christ Jesus. It is up to us to wear them into town.
When we stand before Jesus as His bride, we will be wearing a garment created out of the righteous deeds of our life in Christ. Read Revelation 19:6.
God’s Love produces Redemption for us.
Jesus’ Life paid for our Righteousness in us.
The Holy Spirit gives Light for Sanctification to shine from us.
Redemption is the doctrine of God’s love.
Righteousness (Justification) is the doctrine of purity.
Sanctification: The doctrine of completing in our soul God’s love and purity with resurrection power, making tangible the unseen.
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. - 1Corinthians 1:30.
a. Eternal Sanctification.
Scripture reveals sanctification with two perspectives. First, in the eternal perspective, it is completed even though it has not been processed in time. In other words, what is determined is already accomplished. This eternal reality is expressed in Greek grammar as the aorist form of a verb. We see it in 1Thessalonians 5:23:
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, …
“Sanctify” is in the Greek aorist tense. It coveys a completed event combining past, present and future sequencing into a single whole oneness without regard to time. Scripture declares we are already sanctified in Christ Jesus. We are already eternal, already members of God’s family, already heirs of Jesus Christ. “It’s a done deal!”
Being born of God means we are Spiritually created in God’s likeness, in true righteousness and holiness. This is completed for those who are created new in Christ Jesus. We now are, in the present tense, while still wearing flesh, eternally redeemed, righteous and sanctified. We already are “transferred” out of the kingdom of darkness and staked into Christ Jesus’ eternal kingdom of light.
Even though we feel life’s worldly concerns and pressures of the flesh, our new created identity is Spiritual. This new reality, ours now, continues into eternity! We have been personally placed into the eternality of God’s grace culture because we belong to Jesus Christ, the Son of Man! Our sanctification is within God’s culture of grace.
We are making this point emphatically because many believers “in Christ” view our relationship symbolically or philosophically even though it is literal fact. We have been spiritually birthed by God into a new Spiritual existence. We are literally born into God’s own family becoming heirs with a capacity to glorify Jesus Himself in our own self while still in flesh. Jesus said it best, “You in me, and I in you.”
b. Temporal Sanctification
This is made possible because we are already sanctified eternally. We are called to personally participate temporally by faith in God’s grace. This spiritually exercises our will to consume God’s grace enabling our faith to grow. We begin to experience Jesus intimately!
We learn Spiritually from what God temporally created. God uses things we see to teach us spiritual things that are not seen. The Holy Spirit uses the life of Jesus and the written word of scripture to reveal truth so we can choose to believe. Our believing unlocks the dynamic of His life and word in us so we can employ His truth in our experience. In other words, we participate by sanctifying our temporal soul with an eternally sanctified Spirit/spirit. Temporal sanctification is washing our heart, mind and will with righteous truth and holy love.
We are stewards of God’s spiritual gifts to us. The biggest gift is life itself. We need to master this gift inside our self so that we have it to give to others. We teach others by teaching our own self. The best student we have is our own soul. Our carnal soul requires spiritual training through loving, listening and learning. Practice discerning choices for your own mind and emotions. Steadfastly choose to love the One who loves you. Leverage grace into more grace, “grace upon grace.”
It is a process of: a. Knowing who we are in Christ.
b. Accepting God’s relationship in us.
c. Employing our soul with resurrection power
into our Spiritual reality.
But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
-1Peter 1:15-16. (sanctification and holy are the same Greek root word)
We could say sanctification is “He is risen” theology. This was the common greeting among early Christians expressing to each other what was in their heart. Sanctification is you and I experiencing the risen Jesus in our hearts just as did the early Church! It is the result of Jesus’ victory over death by His resurrection. We are His benefactors, but there is a condition. Just as Jesus, the man, died, so we too must submit to death in order to receive His risen holiness.
The measure of His Life in us is proportionate to the level of our death. Our eternal salvation is secure but our life qualitatively depends on temporal participation in His death so that we enjoy His living presence. Our temporal soul is dependent on Spiritual participation in His resurrected Life. “Reckon yourselves dead to sin,” says Paul, “and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” Romans 6:11. It is our choice to love Him and be holy. It is how we will be wearing robes of righteous deeds at the wedding!
Eternal Sanctification is God’s provision for us to enter into His glory by participating in His resurrection life from our flesh. He is our resource, our guarantee for eternal completeness in His purity and righteousness. We bring His eternal sanctification into our soul’s temporal reality so that we can grow our faith through His grace.
Why would He do all of this for us? Why would He enter into such a severe relationship with us, His creatures? Why redeem us in the first place? ANSWER HERE: ____________________.
“In Him was Life and the Life is the Light of men.” Jesus is our logos Life and Light. He is the source for our sanctification but His love raises us up to participate in His Light and Life. This culture of grace is an expression of this great, rich love He offers freely to us. We have to choose what we will do with what He has already given.